Out of habit, I found myself looking to the leg of her dock. Over the years, Lucy and I had developed a very intricate system of communication from our respective docks that involved flashlights and our own version of Morse code if it was dark, and a very imprecise semaphore flag system if it was light. And if one of us needed to talk to the other desperately, we would tie one of the pair of pink bandannas we both had to the leg of our docks. Admittedly, this had not been the most efficient method of communication, and we’d usually end up talking on the phone before we happened to see the lights, or flags, or bandannas. But, of course, the leg of her dock was now bandanna-free.
I kicked off my flip-flops and walked across the sun-warmed planks of our dock barefoot. The dock had been walked on so much over the years that you never had to worry about splinters, like you sometimes did on our front porch. I started walking faster, almost running, wanting to get to the end, to breathe in the scent of water and pine trees, and curl my toes around the edge.
But when I was almost to the end, I stopped short. There was movement at the base of the dock. The kayak I had seen earlier was now tied up and bobbing in the water, and I could see the person who’d been in it—a guy—climbing up the ladder using one hand, holding the kayak paddle in the other. The sun was glancing off the water so that the glare was blocking his face as he stepped on to the dock, but I figured this was probably just a neighbor. He walked forward, out of the glare, then stopped abruptly, staring at me. I blinked in surprise, and found myself staring back.
Standing across from me, five years older, all grown up, and much cuter than I remembered him being, was Henry Crosby.
Chapter three
I FELT MY JAW DROP, WHICH I HADN’T REALIZED UNTIL THAT moment was something that actually happened in real life. I closed it quickly, then blinked at him again, trying to regroup as my brain struggled to comprehend what all-grown-up Henry was doing standing in front of me.
He dropped the paddle on the dock, then took a small step forward and folded his arms across his chest. “Taylor Edwards,” he said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.
“Henry?” I asked, a little faintly, even though of course it was him. For one thing, he had known me, which some random kayaker probably wouldn’t have. And for another, he looked the same—except much, much better.
He was tall, and broad-shouldered, with the same brown hair, so dark it almost looked black, and cut short. I could no longer see the freckles he’d had when we were younger, but his eyes were still the same hazel, though they looked more green than brown now. His jaw also somehow seemed more defined, and his arms were muscular. I couldn’t make this fit with the last time I’d seen him, when he’d been shorter than me, and skinny, with scraped-up elbows and knees. All in all, Henry looked very cute. And very not happy to see me.
“Hi,” I said, just to say something to try and mask the fact that I had been staring.
“Hello,” he said, his voice cold. His voice was also deeper, and no longer cracking every other word, like it had been the last time I’d heard it. His eyes met mine, and I wondered suddenly what changes he could see in me, and what he thought of the way I looked now. Unfortunately, I’d looked pretty much the same since childhood, with blue eyes and straight, fine hair that fell somewhere between blond and brown. I was medium height, with a wiry build, and I certainly hadn’t gained many of the curves I’d been so desperately hoping for when I was twelve. I now wished I’d taken the time to do anything with my appearance that morning, as opposed to just rolling out of bed. Henry’s eyes traveled down to my outfit, and when I realized what I was wearing, I inwardly cursed myself. Not only was I running into someone who clearly hated me, but I was doing in it a T-shirt I’d stolen from him.
“So,” he said, and then a silence fell. My heart was pounding hard, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to just turn and leave, get in the car and not stop driving until I got back to Connecticut. “What are you doing here?” he finally asked, a hard edge in his voice.
“I could ask you the same question,” I said, thinking back to only a few minutes earlier, when I’d told Warren so confidently that Henry was ancient history, sure that I’d never see him again. “I thought you’d left.”
“You thought I’d left?” he asked, with a short, humorless laugh. “Really.”
“Yes,” I said, a little testily. “We passed your house today, and it was all different. And apparently owned by some lush named Maryanne.”
“Well, a lot’s changed in five years, Taylor,” he said, and I realized it was the second time he used my whole name. Before, Henry had only called me Taylor when he was mad at me—most of the time, he had called me Edwards, or Tay. “We’ve moved, for one.” He pointed to the house next to mine, the one so close that I could see a line of pots on the windowsill. “Right there.”
I just stared where he was pointing for a moment. That was the Morrisons’ house, and I’d just assumed they were still there, Mr. and Mrs. Morrison and their mean poodle. “You live next door to me?”
“We have for a few years now,” he said. “But since there were always renters at your place, I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”
“Me neither,” I admitted, “if you want to know the truth.”
“So what happened?” he asked, looking right at me and startling me with the greenness of his eyes. “Why are you back, all of a sudden?”
I felt my breath catch as the reason—never far from my thoughts—crashed into the front of my mind, seeming to dim the afternoon light a little. “Well,” I said slowly, looking away from him and out to the water, trying to think about how to explain it. It wasn’t even like it was that complicated. All I had to say was something along the lines of My dad’s sick. So we’re spending the summer together up here. That wasn’t the hard part. The hard part came with the follow-up questions. How sick? With what? Is it serious? And then the inevitable reaction when people realized how serious it actually was. And that what I meant, but hadn’t said, was that we were spending our last summer together.
I didn’t have a practiced explanation because I had assiduously avoided having this conversation. Word had spread around school pretty quickly, preventing me from having to explain the situation. And if I was with my mother, and we happened to run into an acquaintance in the grocery store who asked after my father, I left the task of breaking the news to her. I would look pointedly in the other direction, or wander a few steps away, as though yielding to the inexorable pull of the cereal aisle, pretending that the difficult conversation she was having had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I wasn’t entirely sure I could say the words out loud—or handle the follow-up questions—without losing it. I hadn’t really cried yet, and I didn’t want to risk this happening in front of Henry Crosby.